Zipmex Thailand denies reports of THB5 billion damage to investors
Digital assets trading platform Zipmex Thailand said on Thursday that damage to investors in Thailand from their investment in Zipmex Global amounted to less than 5 billion.
Zipmex Thailand CEO Akalarp Yimwilai did not disclose the exact amount of damage from investments in the Zipup+ product of Zipmex Global made via the Zipmex Thailand platform.
Akalarp said he was consulting the company’s lawyer about disclosing details of the investment in Zipup+.
“The damage did not amount to 5 billion baht as reported by sone online media,” Akalarp clarified.
“Now, I am consulting with lawyers as to whether we can disclose the amount.”
Akalarp reiterated that Zipup+ was not a product of Zipmex Thailand but of Zipmex Global.
On Wednesday, Zipmex Thailand sent shock waves among its customers by suspending withdrawal of both cryptocurrency and baht currency at 6pm.
Zipmex Thailand initially announced that the withdrawal function was disabled because its trading partners were in a financial crisis.
Then at 7pm, Akalarp issued a long statement to explain the problem.
Akalarp said the brief suspension was necessary to discontinued the Zipup+ product and its Z Wallet, an electronic wallet of the product, from the Zipmex Thailand platform so that Zipmex Thailand’s own Trade Wallet could continue to be used when the system resumed at 8pm.
In the statement, Akalarp explained that customers in Thailand used ZipUp+ to deposit in Zipmex Global in Singapore, which in turn used the money to deposit with Babel Finance and Celsius.
Akalarp said Babel Finance and Celsius later suffered from a liquidity crunch so Zipmex Global could not respond to clients’ demands when they wanted to withdraw money from their Z Wallet accounts.
As a result of the liquidity crunch, customers were unable to withdraw their digital assets, such as bitcoin and ethereum, from Z Wallet.
Akalarp said the issue did not affect the baht and digital currencies in the Trade Wallet accounts with Zipmex Thailand and the deposit and withdrawal functions of Trade Wallet would resume at 8pm.
Akalarp said in the statement that Zipmex Thailand would sue Zipmex Global, Babel Finance and Celsius for the return of digital assets of Zipmex Thailand’s customers.
Akalarp said Zipmex Thailand was willing to organise a Class Action lawsuit for its customers and would shoulder all the legal costs.
Zipmex Thailand resumed trading at 8pm on Wednesday as announced.
“After we resumed trade at 8pm, our customers still deposited into their Trade Wallet to trade digital assets,” Akalarp said on Thursday.
